Conventionally, information managing apparatuses such as a camera, a video camera, a cellular phone, a compact disk storing and reproducing apparatus, a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) recording and reproducing apparatus, which display image information and the like stored on a storage medium on display unit or store image information and the like on a storage medium, have been put to practical use.
In particular, a camera for image-retrieving an image stored on a storage medium is proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-76302. This camera is useful in that the camera can retrieve a desired image only from a storage medium that can be connected at a time.
Note that, concerning judgment on similarity of images executed in image retrieval processing, in addition to a judgment method described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-76302, a judgment method described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-233800 is known.
Incidentally, various memory type storage media such as a compact Flash® card (hereinafter referred to as CF card) and various disk type storage media such as a Compact Disc Read Only Memory (CD-ROM), a Compact Disc Recordable (CD-R), a Compact Disc Rewritable (CD-RW), and a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) become less expansive every year. Moreover, a storage capacity of a storage medium increases. Thus, it is predicted that, in future, even an individual owns a large number of large capacity storage media.
However, in the conventional techniques, although it is possible to find out a desired image from a storage medium that can be connected at a time, there still is a problem in finding out a desired image from plural or a large number of storage media.
In the conventional techniques, every time a storage medium is replaced, image retrieval has to be executed on all pieces of image information stored on the storage medium. Therefore, it is likely that it takes long to find out a target image and an operator is required to bear significant labor. This problem will attract more attention if a capacity of a storage medium increased and a user owns a large number of such storage media.